Humans and Wildlife Conservation

            The sky was blue with a light dusting of whispy clouds as the sun was reaching her throne at noon.  We passed through several ecosystems, riverine, acacia woodland, and scrubland, the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro poking through the light clouds as a constant backdrop.  Unlike national parks where driving was confined to set gravel roads, here in Kimana Game Sanctuary, our driver Sipaya defined his own roads as he helped us track down ungulate populations.  As we were counting a herd of zebra, someone pointed to a massive grey blob in the middle of the savanna.  As Sipaya drove closer we realized it was an elephant.  Dead. And missing a face. 

            The male elephant had been lying on his side for several days as we could ascertain from the stench and vulture droppings sprayed along his stiff body.  Where was once a face, now rotted flesh and muscle spilled out on the ground.  The elephant’s trunk, hacked off, was lying next to the body.   The tusks were nowhere to be seen.  Suddenly the blue sky and Kilimanjaro backdrop grew shadowy.  A sticky silence hung in the air.  I closed my eyes but the stench of the elephant remained in my nose. 

            While my classmates and I believed this was the result of poaching, we later found the elephant died due to human-wildlife conflict.  A farmer had speared the elephant numerous times with poisoned arrows after the elephant had destroyed his field.  The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) had later been called when a villager saw the dead elephant and confiscated the tusks to prevent poachers from taking them.  The elephant represents an ever-increasing conservation conflict in East Africa where elephants, rhinos, and lions especially have been killed due to poaching and human-wildlife conflicts.  In 1930 there were approximately 5-10 million elephants in Africa, now only about 450,000, less than 1% of the 1930 estimate, remain.  In two Tanzanian game reserves alone, 31,348 elephants were killed in three years[1].

            The continent of Africa, often considered the last frontier for mega fauna, is believed to lose most elephants, rhinos, and lions by the year 2030[2].  If that were the case, African countries would be following the footsteps of Western cultures.  Europe lost most of its wildlife species centuries ago, and while some populations are making a comeback, they will never return in the same abundance as they once were. Writers such as Gene Stratton-Porter and William Temple Hornaday described the extermination of North American wildlife species, the passenger pigeon and American bison, respectively.  In the cases of the passenger pigeon and American bison, as well as many other wildlife species such as the wolf, rampant hunting and lack of management regulations caused premature extinction and endangerment.  Humans share the world with more species than our own and must begin to live with an ethic.

            The Maasai, a tribe in Kenya and Tanzania, have long lived with a land ethic of caring for the environment around them.  This past January, I had the opportunity to meet up with a good friend, Francis, in Kenya who is part of the Maasai tribe.  The last time we had spent time together was December 2012 when he guided me for eight days along a river in Kenya so I could collect data for research.  During data collection in 2012, we would often discuss wildlife conservation.  I learned from Francis that the Maasai have long lived among the wildlife and have deep respect for the land.  It is taboo for Maasai people to hunt or eat any wildlife, it is also taboo for Maasai to cut down trees as they believe trees have a spiritual presence.  The land ethic of the Maasai is similar to Aldo Leopold’s as the Maasai see the land in a collective sense and realize they have survived because the of the land.  To the Maasai, the land has more value than economic. 

            As I met with Francis this past January, he updated me on the Amboseli Ecosystem, a region in southern Kenya where a large population of Maasai people live alongside wildlife, also where Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks are located.  Francis is involved in conducting elephant research with Dr. Moses Okello, a top conservation researcher in Kenya.  According to Francis, this past year a record number of elephants returned to Amboseli during their annual migration route.  While this is excellent news, there is still much more work to be done in wildlife conservation in East Africa.

            The largest contributing factor to decreasing wildlife in East Africa is poverty.  The dead elephant I witnessed was dead because of poverty.  The farmer that killed the elephant no doubt was upset because a rummaging elephant destroyed his very livelihood.  Human-wildlife conflict occurs most often when wildlife destroys farms or eats livestock.  Livestock and agriculture are the primary means of existence for many people in East Africa and to loose it means their family will very well go hungry. 

            Often times local people are blamed for poaching, however poaching is a hierarchal system where wealthy foreigners come supplying sophisticated technology to locals who are paid a small salary to help track the animals.  Local people take such jobs to provide for their families even if they do not agree with the act of poaching.  The only people who economically benefit from poaching in East Africa are the government officials who are paid bribes to look the other way despite the irony that killing the wildlife decreases tourism, the largest economic activity in East Africa. 

            Wildlife conservation in East Africa is about humans just as much as wildlife.  Humans need wildlife for ecosystem services, tourism revenue, and intrinsic value.  Wildlife needs humans for protection and management regulation.  However, neither side will be successful unless poverty alleviation occurs.  The people of East Africa have a land ethic Leopold would agree with, but they also need to feed their families.  Finding a way to maintain respect and admiration for the collective land while finding ways to feed their families in sustainable ways would hopefully mean elephants, rhinos, and many other African species have a chance at surviving through the next generation. 

Dead male elephant seen November 2012 in Kimana Wildlife Sanctuary

Female white rhino seen November 2012 at Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya.  Lake Nakuru NP is a fenced in wildlife sanctuary for both white and black rhinos.  

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[1] africanwildlifetrust.org/tanzania-poaching

[2] “Elephants, rhinos could be wiped out in Africa by 2030, wildlife advocate warns,” by J. Straziuso, 2014, The Associated Press.  

Holy Ground

           Paha Sapa.  A land long considered to be sacred by the Lakota who once called the pine-forested hills home.  Since the age of eight, I have known the land in the Black Hills is holy, even if I didn’t always understand why.  The Black Hills were revered because of Camp Judson, my church camp, ironically nestled five miles away from a desecrated granite face carved with the faces of four white men.  At Camp Judson I learned how to worship among the lichen-carpeted boulders and towering pine trees.  I came to expect God’s voice among the wind and discovered I could serve God by healing nature.  Because of the foundation I built at Camp Judson, I have been able to explore new territories, learn from other landscapes, and expect God to be present everywhere. 

            The sun tiptoes to the horizon signaling in this place, time for Vespers.  As a hundred students march up the eroded trail, some scrambling over the boulders along the way, voices begin to quiet.  At the summit of the hill, a staircase made from the rocks leads into an amphitheater, carved into the hillside.  The amphitheater is surrounded on the sides and back by large granite boulders, shaded green by the lichen.  In the front, is a steep hillside that overlooks the lake.  When facing the front, one’s face looks to the west, to the ever-lowering sun and to the vast bald cliffs in the distance.  Tufts of grass sprout up around the area and coniferous trees grow between cracks in the rocks and wherever else their roots can anchor.  The rows of the amphitheater were constructed with granite and quartz from this very location.  They are dust and soil speckled with mica that inevitably stays on ones person for days and fallen pine needles.  The alter in the front of the amphitheater was built by placing one slab of rock on top of another until it was tall enough to hold a Bible for a speaker.   God is here, not because of the songs we sing or the words of the pastor.  He sits on the sloping boulder to the right, legs outstretched, hands behind him, his face lifted as if drinking in the last warmth of the sun. 

            I always wanted to remove my shoes at Vespers for I felt the words “the place where you are standing is holy ground” reverberate through my chest.  I felt these words again as I sat on a boulder a half a mile away from Vespers, listening to the wind.  It was on this boulder that I realized, listening to the wind, that God still spoke.  It wasn’t just Vespers or the boulder that was sanctified, it was the entire landscape; the hiking trail to Horsethief Lake, among the reeds of our small lake (which is more like a waterhole than lake) where we would find turtles and snakes, Goat Ridge, the rocking chairs where we would watch stars.  This land was not holy because of our doing or the camp’s mission statement.  The land was holy before we arrived.  It was probably holy even before the Lakota deemed it Paha Sapa.  It is sacred because God dwells here.  All land is sacred, but I stopped long enough here to notice. 

            I didn’t understand all land is sacred until I traveled to East Africa.  I figured Camp Judson was holy because that was where I met Christ for the first time.  I traveled to East Africa with the expectation that I would see some fantastic flora and fauna but not really with the expectation of stumbling across holy land.  Because my study abroad program in Tanzania and Kenya focused on wildlife management, we visited five different national parks in the two countries.  The first national park we visited was Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania, about twenty-five kilometers from the village we lived in.  I had forgotten temporarily about meeting God and sacred land until our first day at Lake Manyara.

            As the car passed the visitors center and entered into the park, it was like a curtain of trees and vines was suddenly dropped, separating the stage from the audience.  The landscape quickly turned from thick Acacia forests to a small creek to scrubland and finally to grassland.  As we traveled between these different ecosystems, it became apparent that though East Africa is known for its mega fauna, the birds were just as diverse and colorful, all singing their own melodies.  The lilac-breasted roller was a smattering of lilac, sky blue, brown, and green, the superb starlings had chests of orange and bodies of cobalt blue, and the weavers in their bright yellow.  Of course, we saw more then birds.  When an elephant passed by our car, my breathing ceased and I felt my immense smallness.  When we first saw a giraffe pop its head from behind a tree, I instantly thought of dinosaurs.  The wildebeest and zebra languished on the grassland, making calls like donkeys.  As we drove through the cathedral of yellow-barked acacias, the scent of the blossoms became the only perfume I wished to smell again.  After being confronted with so much splendor, I couldn’t help but lift my hands and face in worship.  And that’s when I saw Mungu. 

            Mungu was walking amongst the trees, caressing the bark and speaking to them.  He was dressed in the traditional Maasai attire, several red sheets of cloth draped around his body, beads on his wrists and ankles, holding a wooden staff.  He sprinkled out soil and seeds from his hand, whispering a blessing over the plant’s growth and the animals that would one day eat the plant.  He led his goats and sheep to fresh water pasture and I understood Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”. 

            When I saw Mungu walking amongst the trees, I realized my folly in forgetting this land was also sacred.  I may not have known it for long or with the intimacy that I did Camp Judson, but Mungu dwelt here just as he did in the Black Hills.  The land was sacred because the very soil, trees, and wildlife that populated the Tanzanian countryside came from the hands of Mungu.  After I saw Mungu in Lake Manyara, I opened my eyes and found him everywhere in East Africa; on Moyo Hill, the Serengeti, along the Noolturesh River, and everywhere in between.  The land exists in itself for the pleasure of God who drinks in the last sunlight and knows the animals by name.  I am merely allowed to enter the holy ground where God already dwells to share in the delight and glory. 

                      

* Mungu is the Swahili name for “God”   

Lake Manyara National Park
Mto wa Mbu, Tanzania 

Vespers at Camp Judson,
Black Hills, South Dakota